A Cacophony of Angels
Part IX

 
It rained that night.

I'd stayed at Heath's until the clouds had moved in and the sunlight had started to waver and dim, flittering weakly through breaks in the graying sky. I discovered then that hide had a real dislike for rain, and the dominant part of my brain that was still him had me getting up from the table before I knew it, pushing back the chair. Heath had obviously been expecting it, because he didn't say a word, simply scooted his own chair out with the same easy grace he did everything, grabbed the car keys from the kitchen counter.

It had already begun to rain as I waved goodbye to him and watched the flashy red car speed off through the growing puddles, flinging water across drowned asphalt and I was left to trek up the sodden stairs to the door of my apartment. It was dark inside when I entered - natural, since I hadn't left any lights on - but in the strange greyness of the rain-soaked dusk and the sudden loudness of the wall clock ticking from the kitchen, I felt somehow trapped in a dream. Even the simple movements of removing my own shoes and running my hands through my damp hair felt unreal.

I moved to turn on the lights and then stopped, let my hand drop down to my side and then moved mechanically into the living room, dropping my coat on the coffee table and flopping down on the worn couch. The TV sat blankly in the corner, and I recalled idly an old Japanese film I'd seen as a child, one in which a ghost from a cursed video came out of the television, killing those who watched the video. I hadn't been able to sleep for weeks afterwards.

My father had called it ridiculous, of course, when I tried to tell him that I didn't want to have a TV in my room anymore. But he never watched movies. I didn't quite know what had possessed me to tell him about my childish fears in the first place.

I watched as the rain dripped slowly from the eaves of the roof onto the balcony outside, and reached in my pocket for a smoke and a lighter, stopped in mid-motion. Smoke outside, a part of my brain scolded severely, and I beat it back. Who would care, anyway? There was only hide, and hide was me, and what was the use in pretending?

A strange sort of eerie calmness came over me, and for a moment, I stared outside at the balcony railing, wondering idly what would happen if I stepped outside, climbing over that metal rail, and let myself plunge to the sidewalk below.

He is sleeping with a beautiful face. I've tried to wake him up again and again, but he is still sleeping...

I shivered, jolting back to the reality of the quickly darkening room, the sudden brightness of the streetlights outside, lighting with a sizzle of electric sparks, a vivid orange glow.

There was a presence in the room with me.

"hide?" I said.

"I'm here," he replied quietly, and I was not surprised to see him leaning against the doorframe as if he had always been standing there, pink hair still shockingly bright in the rainy twilight. He did not look at me, and I waited patiently until he uncrossed his arms from over his chest and crossed over to where I was sitting on the couch, dropping down beside me. He still did not meet my gaze.

Idly, as I waited for him to speak, I noticed that even though he was sitting, his body made no imprint on the couch cushion, nor did his feet sink into the carpet.

"What do you think?" he said finally.

I could have stalled, asked him what he meant, told him I didn't understand what he was talking about. But there was no more time for pretending.

"I didn't realize," I said softly, "that you loved them all this much."

hide's face contorted for a second, and I knew that if he had tears, he would be crying them. I wasn't sure why I wasn't crying, myself.

"I shouldn't have forced you here," he said. "It was wrong of me. Forgive me." He hesitated a moment, then gave a forced, short laugh. "Even after my death, I can't seem to stop making mistakes."

"We all make mistakes," I began, and he waved an irritable hand at me.

"Yeah, and some of us more than others."

A corner of my mouth twitched at that. He sounded more natural in that last statement, more his usual self, and I reflected that just a few days ago, I had hated him, would probably have been denying that he was present in the room at all.

"hide?" I said.

He glanced up at me, finally, and I was disturbed by the darkness and depth of his eyes. Even as a ghost, there was something remarkably human about him, something which I wanted to grab hold of and pull to me and never let go.

Was this how my father had felt, all those years ago?

"What is it, Kouki?" he wondered softly. My birth name sounded strange on his tongue, in my ears. The clock ticked from the kitchen, time slipping away through my fingers, history repeating over and over. I mulled over the question on my tongue, trying to think of a way to phrase it so it did not sound rude, abrupt, and found none. So I asked it.

"Why did you die?"

He could have pretended not to understand. He could have asked me to clarify the question, to stall. But maybe it was the rain, or maybe it was just that a week was almost up, and I had come away with more questions than I had found answers to, or maybe it was just the fact that he had been waiting for someone to ask him for all these years, except there was no one listening.

"When you listen to music," hide said abruptly, "what's the one thing you look for?"

I blinked. "Uh...melody? I have no idea."

"Emotion," hide said. "Truth. All great music carries the true emotions of people buried deep inside. It's what moves us, what makes us human."

I wasn't quite sure what he was getting at, but I remained silent.

"I first joined X," hide went on, "as a glory venture. I was casual friends with Yoshi- your father. He asked me to try it out for a bit, and I said sure. They were big names in the indies business back in the day, you know, and it sounded like a good deal. Taiji and I were casual acquaintances as well, and your father had asked him to join as well."

He shifted on the couch, though there were no wrinkles in the fabric, no depression to show a human form sitting there. "I'm not sure when the band became more than that. Certainly, I've always considered myself a musician. But X was more than just a band, it was more than just a way of life, it was more than family. It wasEomething so deep it became a part of me. We all felt it."

"I've felt it," I murmured, and hide nodded.

"I know that was Yoshiki's vision from the beginning. I don't have to tell you that your father was - is - an amazingly gifted man, and those kinds of people sometimes dream bigger than reality. He wanted to make music as the world had never made before, and we, the members of the band, made his dream come true. He attracted the type of people who he knew would work willingly for him, who were talented enough to create the thing he wanted to create, who would kill themselves for him. Because we did."

I nodded. "But that's never a good thing."

"No," hide agreed. "No. And we all knew it. Taiji knew it earlier than any of us did - or at least, he voiced it sooner than we did. I knew that someday things would end, that Yoshiki would either work himself to death or work the band to death. But I stuck by him anyway, because I knew that if I didn't, no one else would."

"Why not?"

hide gave a short laugh. "You've met most of the members in the past few days. Give me your best guess."

"I don't," I began, and then I remembered Toshi's weary face before mine, the defeated tone in his voice.

You know, Hideto...all my life, I've just wanted one thing. I wanted to matter.

I thought of Toshi, hanging on to Yoshiki for the memory of a ruined friendship. Taiji, the gifted, stubborn bassist become the ragged homeless man in the park, his life fallen apart before his eyes because of one man's pride. Pata, who I still did not really know, but who I knew somehow stayed because everyone else did. Heath, the outsider, forever in Taiji's shadow, trying to fill a place that could never be filled because the memory had never been spoken and therefore could not fade.

And then there was hide.

I realized then that though Yoshiki was the leader of the band in name, hide was the true band leader. He was the rock in the storm, the one who everyone looked to for confirmation, for support. He had wept for Taiji when he had left, he had sheltered Toshi from the worst of Yoshiki's tantrums, he had been strong for the man who would one day become my father.

"Why?" I said.

"Because. Because there was no one else."

Because there was no one else.

"I tried as long and as hard as I could. When Taiji...disappeared...because he did, you know, we never talked about him leaving, even though we all knew that Yoshiki had told him get out, you're fired...he pretended nothing was wrong. After he left, I kept the band going. When I knew that everyone's tempers had strained to the breaking point, after Art of Life, I was the one who brought it up, who said we needed a break. I brought us back together for the last live, after Toshi quit." He cocked his head to one side, as if thinking of something. "I suppose it still stings a little though, that neither Taiji nor Toshi told me of their intentions."

I frowned over this for a moment. "Yeah. Why didn't they?"

hide shook his head. "It's strange. But if I had been themE don't think I would have either. I think it was because they knew I would persuade them to stay, that I would have interceded on their behalf to Yoshiki, and they didn't want that. If I'd asked, I think they would have stayed."

"And killed themselves," I said slowly, and then I realized what hide was leading up to.

"Our music," hide said, "was true music. It is the kind of music that can make you feel frenzied inside, or joyful, or make you cry, or leave a hole so deep inside of you that nothing in the world can ever fill it."

Voiceless screaming.

"But that kind of music carries a price."

"There was a price," hide said softly. "You understand. Everything comes with a price."

He was trying to insulate me, I knew, from having to hear what he did not want to say. That it had been Yoshiki, in the end, my father, who had brought about the ruin of the band he so loved. No, it was more than love - it was an obsession. And hide, the one who everyone clung to so tightly, had been the greatest victim.

"First there was Taiji," I mused softly, counting on my fingers, bending my index finger backward ever so slowly. "And then there was Toshi. And then...

"I know what they said about me, after it was over," hide said. "They wanted to believe it was an accident. That I was drunk. I'll tell you, Kouki, I was drunk, and I was pretty stupid whenever I got drunk. Part of it was that, I'll grant. But there was more to it than that." He turned back to me again abruptly, his eyes blazing with an unnatural fire in the gloom, and even yesterday I might have been startled by it and pulled back in shock. But not now.

hide had loved X Japan too much, and he had paid the price.

I tried to feel the blazing anger against my father that I was accustomed to feeling, tried to rail against him in my mind, tried to think of some appropriate nasty words that would express to hide all that I felt for this man. But as I searched my mind, I found that I couldn't, and I didn't know why.

"It's getting late," I said instead. My words fell flat in the silence, amid the patter of the raindrops, and I sensed hide's presence shift, even though he had remained perfectly still on the couch.

"We have three more days," he said. "And then you can go home." His eyes searched mine. "Sleep well."

"hide-"

He was gone.

I sighed, stretching out on the couch where he had sat. The fabric was cool to the touch, as if no one had ever been there, and I let my head fall back against one of the ragged throw pillows.

Everything comes with a price.

I found my fingers scrabbling for the phone by the side of the couch even before I realized I was doing it, dialing a number that must have been so familiar to hide that he could dial it in his sleep, but was a mystery to me. Nevertheless, I put the phone to my ear, listened to the bleating of its staticky ringing, wishing that the headache creeping up on me once again would go away, wishing that it would stop raining.

"Moshi moshi."

I blinked at the familiar voice, tried to compose a greeting in my head, unable to come up with anything appropriate. My mind blanked.

"Um...hello?" There was no irritation in the voice, just a cool curiosity, a pleasant sort of sleepiness. "hide?"

One can be many things, but one can't be God. Yoshiki wants to be God, and he knows he can't do it...but he'll come as close as he can so that he can feel like he means something.

"Pata?" I said. "Do you believe in God?"

The other end of the line was silent now, and then Pata's voice said, "Are you sick?"

"It's raining," I said dreamily. "I hate the rain."

"Are you drunk?" Pata persisted, and I wondered for a second if he would offer to come over and get drunk with me. But no, that was only the stereotype of Pata I'd built in my own mind, the public image of Pata that he had cultivated for the fans, and I did not know the real Pata at all.

"What are you doing?" I said. "Sitting there by the phone waiting for me to call, huh."

"You never call," he accused. "Anything wrong? Stuck on an arrangement? Need me to bail you out?"

I laughed. "You know, it's not called 'bailing out.' It's called 'providing inspiration.' And you're very inspriring."

"Yeah, yeah."

In the back of my mind I could hear a weird thrumming, as if from a faraway melody, too soft to be heard but something that was there, the vibration of ghostly strings, sound waves emanating from the source coiling round and round and spreading like ripples in a glassy lake. "I was just bored," I said. "Wanted to say sorry, too, for the way I've been acting."

"Hey don't worry about it, man," Pata said, and I felt his words melt off into the air, enjoying listening to the sound of the way he spoke, relaxed with a yet quiet kind of subtleness that would burst into life at the slightest spark. "We've all been tired. Just don't forget Yoshiki's little bash this weekend. Toshi and Heath would be heartbroken if you didn't show up."

This weekend? "To tell the truth," I confessed. "I've forgotten all about it. Heath and I went to look at places today, even...but I didn't realize...

"You've been sick."

"Still-"

"You need a party, Matsumoto. Remind me to throw you one sometime. Or we can just go out and get drunk, whichever you want."

"Second option sounds better to me."

Pata laughed. It was a very natural sound, and I realized that it was the first time that I had heard any of the members of this band laugh like that, even Heath. I wondered why.

"You're in good sprits tonight."

"I like the rain," he returned, and I couldn't think of anything to say to that, so I simply sat there with the receiver in my hand, pressed to my ear, listening to the rain pounding on the balcony now, so hard that splashes of water leapt up against the windows in sprays.

"I worry about you sometimes, you know," Pata said.

"I'm fine."

I could almost hear him smile. "Take care of yourself, man. You're all we've got."

My heart clenched at the words, but I made my voice light with an effort. "I tell you, I'm good. All of you have been good to me. You make the world go round."

Pata laughed again. "We try our best."

"Tell me," I said, and an odd sort of curiosity gripped me. "What do you think of me?"

"You're hide," Pata said simply, and I was about to ask him what the hell that meant, when he spoke again. "You're enough."

I knew he wasn't the sort of man to read too deeply into things like that, wasn't the sort of man who took stock by emotions and fragile human feelings, as Yoshiki or Toshi or even I did, and that was where our paths differed. But Pata was Pata.

"Thanks," I said simply.

"I'm in your band, aren't I?" he returned easily, and I heard a female voice in the background, saying something I couldn't make out, and his voice came back a little rushed. "Wife's calling. Gotta go."

"I'll see you around," I said, and he chuckled.

"Ja."

I replaced the phone on the hook with the same kind of detachment that had gripped me all evening. It was entirely dark now, the falling rain lit with the golden-orange glow of the streetlights, and yet I still couldn't bring myself to get up and close the curtains and turn on the lamps and make myself some dinner. I wasn't too hungry anyway.

Do you believe in God?

Everything made sense to me now, in an odd sort of murky clarity, and I closed my eyes, rested my forehead against my clasped hands, and thought of everything that would come to pass in the next few years. X Japan would disband. hide would die. My father would move to America and meet my mother, and then I would come into the world, blissfully innocent of all the pain that he had left behind, at least for a little while.

That was why Taiji and Toshi and the others did not - could not - blame Yoshiki. Because it had been not just his fault, but everyone's in the end. They had all loved too much, and they had all paid. All of them, even Pata and Heath, who probably had the best chance of escaping alive, were scarred in ways that no one could understand.

I finally heaved myself off the couch, shuffled into the kitchen and ripped off the top of a bowl of instant ramen, clumsily pushing it into the microwave and hitting the buttons numbly. It was cold, and my fingers wouldn't work properly. Everything was a shimmering blur in the haze and my eyes felt heavy and hot, but there were no tears.

The microwave beeped and then turned off, but I made no move to open the door. The memory of Yoshiki's ghostly piano swirled inside my brain, fragments of a lost song.

He is still sleeping...

"Are you still here, hide?" I wondered softly, but there was no answer.

 
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